occupation of herding sheep. After his return, speaking of his trip to Australia, he said: "I know you thought I was crazy, but I was not. It was the sanest act of my life. I felt that I must do some great penance for my sins and follies. I wanted to put a gulf between me and the past."

On the return voyage, he was one day incensed by some real or fancied impertinence of a waiter at the dinner table. After waiting a moment in vain for the captain to reprove the servant, he exclaimed: "Captain, I will never eat another mouthful on your ship." The next day he was not seen in the cabin, and a lady passenger, who had heard his singular threat, went to his state room and told him she would bring him something to eat from her own stores, in which neither the ship nor captain had any interest. Madam," he answered, "my words were I would not eat on this ship." Fortunately, they put into Honolulu before he was literally starved, and he took passage on another vessel.

66

Soon after he arrived in San Francisco, he was offered a very large fee, and a contingent fortune, to appear for the "Peter Smith titles." It was a temptation, for he was very poor, and wanted money; wanted still more the eclat of a great law-suit, and thirsted for its excitement; but, on a collateral case, he had once given an opinion against the validity of the Peter Smith sales, and, from a sense of professional honor, declined the employment, and refused to reexamine the question.

After his "great penance," his character grew more subdued, his aims more rational, his life more steadfast. He no longer sought excitement and forgetfulness in dissipation and gambling. He had always clung to the idea of immortality—but rather as a hope than a faith; and there was not a scar on his soul of which he was not painfully conscious. His tired heart wanted rest, and he was beginning to seek it — where so many other restless spirits have sought- under the shadow of authority in the teachings of Rome. Not for him, though, was ever the undisturbed peace of the faithful; and when the devil in his blood arose, who can tell the agony of his soul's conflict?

He returned from Washington, after the argument of Field v. Seabury, in the spring of 1856. In the fall of '57, he was again preparing to go East on profes

sional business. To one of his friends who tried to

dissuade him from going, he said: "I will stay, if you insist; but I feel that I shall go mad if I do."

He sailed as he had intended. At Aspinwall he connected with the ill-fated Central America, on her last voyage. During the storm he took his turn with other passengers at the pumps, until his strength was exhausted. Coming up to rest, he was met by one of the officers, and ordered back to work.

"Sir," he answered, "I will work no more."

His work was done. He went into his state room, closed the door, and was never seen again. In a short time the wreck went down.

Justice F. H. Mickle, of Crawford county, is the oldest justice of the peace in Indiana. He has held the office for forty years.

LAW AND LAWYERS IN LITERATURE.*

XXII.

EMERSON.

In the essay on Eloquence, which forms a chapter of Ralph Waldo Emerson's new volume entitled "Society and Solitude" - a book full of wisdom expressed in a most honeyed style-are a few remarks on lawyers: "There is a petty lawyer's fluency, which is sufficiently impressive to him who is devoid of that talent, though it be, in so many cases, nothing more than a facility of expressing with accuracy and speed what everybody thinks and says more slowly, without new information or precision of thought, but the same thing, neither less nor more."

"In a court of justice the audience are impartial; they really wish to sift the statements, and know what the truth is. And in the examination of witnesses there usually leap out, quite unexpectedly, three or four stubborn words or phrases, which are the pith and fate of the business, which sink into the ear of all parties, and stick there, and determine the cause. All the rest is repetition and qualifying; and the court and the country have really come together to arrive at these three or four memorable expressions, which betrayed the mind and meaning of somebody."

"I remember, long ago, being attracted by the distinction of the counsel and the local importance of the cause, into the court room. The prisoner's lawyers were the strongest and cunningest lawyers in the commonwealth. They drove the attorney for the state from corner to corner, taking his reasons from under him, and reducing him to silence, but not to submission. When hard pressed, he revenged himself in turn on the judge, by requiring the court to define what salvage was. The court, thus pushed, tried

words, and said every thing it could think of to fill the time, supposing cases, and describing duties of insurers, captains, pilots and miscellaneous seaofficers, that are, or might be-like a schoolmaster puzzled by a hard sum, who reads the context with emphasis. But all this flood not serving the cuttlefish to get away in, the horrible shark of the district attorney being still there, grimly awaiting with his 'the court must define' - the poor court pleaded its inferiority. The superior court must establish the law for this, and it read away piteously the decisions of the supreme court, but read to those who had no pity. The judge was forced at last to rule something, and the lawyers saved their rogue under the fog of a definition. The parts were so well cast and discriminated, that it was an interesting game to watch. The government was well enough represented. It was stupid, but it had a strong will and possession, and stood on that to the last. The judge had a task beyond his preparation, yet his position remained real; he was there to represent a great reality—the justice of states, which we could well enough see beetling over his head, and which his trifling talk nowise affected, and did not impede, since he was entirely well-meaning."

*Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the office of the Clerk of the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York, in the year 1870, by IRVING BROWNE.

"The statement of the fact, however, sinks before the statement of the law, which requires immeasurably higher powers, and is a rarest gift, being in all great masters one and the same thing, in lawyers, nothing technical, but always some piece of common sense, alike interesting to laymen as to clerks. Lord Mansfield's merit is the merit of common sense. It is the same quality we admire in Aristotle, Montaigne, Cervantes, or in Samuel Johnson, or Franklin. Its application to law seems quite accidental. Each of Mansfield's famous decisions contains a level sentence or two, which hit the mark. His sentences are not always finished to the eye, but are finished to the mind. The sentences are involved, but a solid proposition is set forth, a true distinction is drawn. They come from and they go to the sound human understanding; and I read without surprise that the black letter lawyers of the day sneered at his 'equitable decisions,' as if they were not also learned. This, indeed, is what speech is for- to make the statement," etc.

BOILEAU,

educated to the law, excuses his desertion to literature, in his first Satire:

"Shall I hereafter act another part,

Phoebus abandon for Bartholu's art?
Turn o'er the Institutes, thumb Littleton,
And draggling at my tail a dirty gown,
Pick up for every cause a double crown?
But at the very thought I start, and find
The Bar and I shall ne'er be of a mind.
Can I in such a barbarous country bawl,
And rend with venal lungs the guilty hall;
Where innocence does daily pay the cost,
And in the labyrinth of law is lost;

Where wrong by tricks and quirks prevails o'er right,
And black is by due form of law made white;

Garvin outnoised by Graham yields the prize,

And Ciceros are formed o'er mutton pies?

E'er I a thought like this can entertain,
Frost shall at midsummer congeal the Seine;
His Holiness shall turn a Protestant,

Beecher wear lawn, and Tyng the younger cant." The translation which I quote has dashes in place of the proper names, and I have ventured to supply the names which I think the poet must have intended. In the eighth satire the following occurs:

"No eagle does upon his peerage sue, And strive some meaner eagle to undo;

No fox was e'er suborned by spite or pay,

To swear his brother fox's life away;

Nor any hind, for impotence at rut,

Did e'er the stag into the Arches put,

Where a grave dean the congress might ordain,
And with that burlesque word his sentence stain.
They do no dreaaful quo warranto fear,

Nor courts of sessions or assize are there,

No common pleas, queen's bench or chancery bar;
But happier they, by nature's charter free,
Secure and safe, in mutual peace agree,
And know no other law but equity."

"What would he think, upon a lord mayor's day,
Should he the pomp and pageantry survey,
Or view the judges, and their solemn train,
March with grave decency to kill a man?
What would he think of us, should he appear
In turn, amongst the crowds, at Westminster,
And there the hellish din and jargon hear,
Where Spencer and his pack, with deep mouth'd notes,
Drown Billingsgate and all its oyster boats?
There see the judges, serjeants, barristers,
Attorneys, counsellors, solicitors,
Criers and clerks, and all the savage crew,
Which wretched man at his own charge undo?"

In his epistle to the Abbot des Roches the poet says:

"Dost think, thou champion of thy church's rights,
That justice follows if the law invites?
Would'st thou thy proud rebellious monks chastise?
Believe me, 'tis a dangerous enterprise.
Can Ausanet, tho' feed, secure the cause,

Convince the judges and compel the laws?
Tho' just thy suit, ne'er think it will succeed.
In vain the law directs, and lawyers plead.
Don't imitate the fools whom lust of gold
Provokes, and makes 'em in a process bold;
Don't at thy cost the greedy bench enrich,
Nor let litigious hopes thy mind bewitch;
For he who in a suit his weapon draws,
Is often beggar'd, tho' he gain his cause.
But who, the lawyers say, would lose his right?
The law has no respect for muck or might.
At Caen they preach this doctrine, where the son
The father follows, and is soon undone.
At Mons betimes the sire this lesson reads,
The son's soon taught, and son the sire succeeds.
But thou on this side of the Oise wert bred,
And wilt not with their follies fill thy head;
Nor wilt thou, like some hot incumbents, squeeze
The clowns, nor sue a peasant for a piece.
Nor e'er the law has ta'en its costly course,
Make bawling Mazier and Corbin hoarse.
No, no-but if thou e'er should'st long to fee
A lawyer, pr'ythee, first consult with me,
And if I can't these wicked thoughts disperse,
Read this old tale, which now I tell in verse:

"It happen'd in a former wrangling age,
An author writes (no matter for the page),
Two travelers, for breakfast ready found
A fat stray oyster lying on the ground.
Says one, 'tis mine, the other says the same,
And hot they grew, and hunger fann'd the flame.
Who should come by, while they debating stand,
But Justice, with the balance in her hand.
To her they both applied. She heard the cause,
And found them bent to leave it to the laws.
She weighed the matter, and to end it well,
Opened the fish, and gave to each a shell,
'Thus,' having swallowed it at once, she cried,
'We judge the cause, and thus the goods divide.
What, but for fools, would law and lawyers do?
'Twas a good oyster, gentlemen, adieu.""

In the first epistle to the king, Boileau speaks of —
"The costly quarrels of the wrangling bar,
More fatal than the bloody feud of war."

The following translation of a Latin epigram by this poet closes the list of his contributions to my subject:

"Upon a young lawyer, the son of a country beadle: "While the fierce beadle's brat does loudly bawl, How silent are the mob, how still the hall! Yet think not that his rhetoric's revered, The son is harmless, but the father's feared."

PETRONIUS ARBITER.

I find that this author has a good deal to say about law and lawyers. "Cerberus, forensis erat causidicus," has been thus translated:

"Sure Cerberus a lawyer first must be,

Whose clam'rous mouth would open for a fee;
But, since whene'er he wrangl'd, still he had
Three specious reasons for the noise he made,
To please his client, to inform the court,
And to gain riches for his own support;
Therefore he's doom'd in hell three heads to bear,
And in his mouth three howling tongues to wear;
That the loud eloquence he once could boast
To his own interest, but his client's cost,
Might now be turn'd to dreadful howls and yelps,
The snarling language of illiterate whelps;
And tho' on earth no other bribe but gold
Would make the pleader for his client scold,
Yet now in hell a greasy sop must be,
Instead of coin, the growling puppy's fee."

In his first satire, one of the characters having had his coat stolen, is advised to resort to law to recover it:

"Law bears the name, but money has the power;
The cause is bad whene'er the client's poor.
Those strict-life'd men that seem above our world,
Are oft too modest to resist our gold,

So judgment, like our other wares, is sold;
And the grave knight, that nods upon the laws,
Wak'd by a bribe, smiles, and approves the cause."

But he is afraid of the law, and is "clear for buying it, though we know it to be our own, and rather recover the treasure with a little money than embroil ourselves in an uncertain suit."

MANDEVILLE,

in the "Fable of the Bees," has these Hudibrastic lines on lawyers, in reference to the subject of the registration of voters:

"The lawyers, of whose art the basis

Was raising feuds and splitting cases,
Oppos'd all Registers, that cheats

Might make more work with dipt estates;
As 'twere unlawful that one's own
Without a law-suit should be known!
They put off hearings wilfully,
To finger the refreshing fee;
And to defend a wicked cause
Examin'd and survey'd the laws,
As burglars shops and houses do,

To see where best they may break through."

Further on he says:

"Justice herself, fam'd for fair dealing,

By blindness had not lost her feeling:
Her left hand, which the scales should hold,
Had often dropt 'em, bribed with gold;
And though she seem'd impartial,
Where punishment was corporal,
Pretended to a reg'lar course,

In murder, and all crimes of force;
Though some first pillory'd for cheating,
Were hang'd in hemp of their own beating;
Yet it was thought, the sword she bore
Check'd but the desp'rate and the poor;
That, urg'd by mere necessity,
Were ty'd up to the wretched tree,

For crimes which not deserv'd that fate,
But to secure the rich and great."

*

*

*

In his sixth dialogue, this author says: The study of the law is very crabbed and very tedious; but the profession of it is as gainful, and has great honours annexed to it: the consequence of this is, that few come to be eminent in it but men of tolerable parts and great application. And whoever is a good lawyer, and not noted for dishonesty, is always fit to be a judge, as soon as he is old and grave enough. To be a lord chancellor, indeed, requires higher talents; and he ought not only to be a good lawyer and an honest man, but likewise a person of general knowledge and great penetration. But this is but one man; and considering what I have said of the law, and the power which ambition and the love of gain have upon mankind, it is morally impossible, that, in the common course of things among the practitioners in chancery, there should not at all times be one or other fit for the seals."

BAXTER,

In his Christian Directory, giving directions to lawyers about their duty to God, says: "Be not counselors or advocates against God, that is, against justice, truth, or innocency. A bad cause would have no patrons if there were no bad or ignorant lawyers. It is a dear-bought fee which is got by sinning; especially by such a willful, aggravated sin as the deliberate pleading for iniquity, or opposing of the truth. Whatever you say or do against truth, and innocency, and justice, you do it against God himself. And is it not a sad case, that among professing Christians there is no cause so bad but can find an advocate

for a fee? I speak not against just counsel to a man that has a bad cause (to tell him it is bad and persuade him to disown it); nor do I speak against you for pleading against excessive penalties or damages; for so far your cause is good, though the main cause of your client was bad; but he that speaketh or counselleth another for the defense of sin, or the wronging of the innocent, or the defrauding another of his right, and will open his mouth to the injury of the just, for a little money, or for a friend, must try whether that money or friend will save him from the vengeance of the Universal Judge (unless faith and true repentance, which will cause confession and restitution, do prevent it). To deal freely with you counselors, it is a matter that they who are strangers to your profession can scarce put any fair construction upon, that the worst cause, for a little money, should find an advocate among you! This driveth the standers by upon this harsh dilemmato think that either your understandings or your consciences are very bad. If, indeed, you so little know a good cause from a bad, then it must needs tempt men to think you very unskilled in your profession. But when almost every cause, even the worst, that comes to the bar, shall have some of you for it, and some against it; and in the palpablest causes you are some on one side and some on the other; the strange difference of your judgments doth seem to betray your weakness. But if you know the causes to be bad which you defend, and to be good which you oppose, it more evidently betrays a deplorable conscience. I speak not of your innocent or excusable mistakes in cases of great difficuty, nor yet of excusing a cause bad in the main from unjust aggravations; but when money will hire you to plead for injustice against your own knowledge, and to use your will to defraud the righteous, and spoil his cause, or vex him with delays for the advantage of your unrighteous client; I would not have your conscience for all your gains, nor your account to make for all the world."

I must admit, it is to be feared that lawyers are too much like other men; no better than clergymen, for instance, either in judgment or conscience. If there is any efficacy in a particular creed, the vast majority of clergymen must be damned for not being wise enough to believe it; and observation teaches us that they are subject to pecuniary influences, for which I do not say they are to be blamed. We live not in a "Saints' Rest," but in a sinful world, and Baxter is not set to scold Matthew Hale.

BISHOP COLLYER,

In his moral essays, has the following dialogue:

"Philotimus. Pray, what is your opinion of those lawyers who appear in a foul cause?

Philalethes. I think if they know it they misbehave themselves, and have much to answer for. What can be more unaccountable than to solicit against justice, and lend the credit of our character to an ill business? To throw in dilatory pleas and false suggestions - to perplex the argument or entangle the witness? To make a mercenary noise against right or reason? To misapply precedents and statutes, and draw the laws into a conspiracy, to endeavor to surprise the judge and mislead the jury? To employ learning, and

This was some thirty years ago, and I have never seen or heard of her since.

After the jury were discharged, I asked one of them on what ground they had acquitted her? He answered, "It served him right!"

It would seem that the sex of the prisoner makes no difference in these cases. But in order to prevent this private vengeance, must not the law provide some adequate remedy? J. W. EDMONDS.

CURRENT TOPICS.

We are glad to learn that the Bar Association, recently formed in New York, has laid the foundation of a good law library, at its rooms, No. 18 West

Twenty-eighth street, near Broadway. Besides the most valuable elementary treatises, it has purchased the United States courts reports, and the principal reports of the courts of the several states. An order has also been sent to London for the purchase of all the English, Scotch and Irish reports from the Year Books down. This library will be open at all hours of the day, and up to a reasonable hour at night.

The staid benchers and barristers of the Inner Temple, and the high judiciary of England, have recently shown their respect for royalty at the expense of their stomachs. The English papers tell us that, after a grand dinner given the other day by that society, and which was attended by the Prince of Wales, the lord chancellor, the lord chief justice, and other nobles and notables, the whole company retired to the withdrawing room, and smoked with great solemnity, in compliment to the Prince of Wales, who has a penchant for that sort of thing.

A new divorce bill has been reported in the Massachusetts senate, providing that there shall hereafter be no divorce from bed and board, and that, in addition to the present causes for divorce, decrees may be made for extreme cruelty, utter desertion, gross and confirmed habits of intoxication contracted after marriage, or cruel and abusive treatment, by either of the parties. The bill is a wise one and ought to be passed. It would be very difficult to advance any sound reasons in favor of the laws for divorce a menso et thoro which now exist.

Francis Kernan having declined to serve as commissioner to revise the statutes, Governor Hoffman has appointed in his place Nelson J. Waterbury, of New York. David A. Wells, Lucius Robinson and Edwin W. Dodge have also been appointed commissioners to revise the laws relative to the assessment and collection of taxes, under a resolution of the last session of the legislature. The selection of Mr. Wells is particularly fortunate. He has for years made the subject of taxation a special study, and is peculiarly fitted to devise a scheme of taxation adjusted to "our burden and our strength."

Considerable consternation has been created in Michigan by the decision of the supreme court pronouncing the general railroad law, passed at the last

session of the legislature, unconstitutional. Judge GRAVES delivered a dissenting opinion, ably reviewing the constitutional powers of the legislature, and maintaining the validity of the law. As several towns have issued bonds under the law, which have been purchased by innocent parties, Gov. Baldwin has issued a proclamation convening the legislature for the purpose of preparing an amendment to the constitution to be submitted to the people.

The commission to codify the laws of the United States, appointed about four years ago, expired by limitation within the past year. Very little was accomplished by that commission, except what was done by Judge JAMES, of Ohio, who was continually occupied, and by Judge JOHNSON, who labored while his health permitted. Congress was rather inclined to let the commission die, but, upon the suggestion of the importance of the work proposed, created a new commission, and the president has paid Judge JAMES the compliment of selecting him as one of the new commission, and has appointed as his colleagues Benj. Vaughan Abbott, of New York, and Victor C. Barringer, of North Carolina.

A motion, excluding the punishment of death from the new penal code about to be adopted in North Germany, was withdrawn on May 23, in the North German parliament. Herr Bismarck, in opposing the motion, said that the federal governments had made considerable sacrifices to insure the adoption of the new code, and that if the death penalty were abolished the unity of the law would be destroyed, and two classes of German citizens be established. The North German Correspondence points out that the new code is in many respects superior to the existing laws of Prussia. Its general tendency is to lighten punishment. Should the new code be introduced, "the sum total of the sentences of imprisonment passed in Prussia alone would be annually decreased by thousands of years."

If all French justice be like that administered in the case of workman Chultz v. The Princess de la Moskowa, the Gallic courts merit the same high reputation as those of England. Chultz, it appears, in pulling down the Hotel Lafitte, the property of the Princess Moskowa, found a marble statue plastered up in a wall, and, under the French law of "treasure trove," claimed half the value of the "find." To this the princess demurred, insisting that the statue had, prior to 1814, formed part of the decoration of the palace, but was then plastered up to keep it from falling into the hands of the allies, at that time about to enter Paris. The court decided in favor of the workman, ordered the statue to be sold, and the proceeds to be equally divided between the parties litigant - the princess to pay the costs.

Daniel McFarland, who was recently acquitted of the murder of Richardson, may be as "mad as a March hare" for ought we know, but there is a won. derful "method in his madness." He now turns up in Morgan county, Indiana, and moves the court for